2024-10-06
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* this article is compiled from ign us related content, the original author dan stapleton, unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.
most sequels of successful games will choose a safe route and make conservative iterative upgrades while retaining the concepts of the previous game. but this is not the case with "icepunk 2": it is a quite bold sequel, using almost completely different city building strategies. it's still set in that bleak frozen world, where people still lead precarious lives, but refreshingly, the game doesn't follow the same old path.
everything from the way you place buildings, to resource management and city heating, has a new look. the way of interacting with the citizens of new london through the political system is quite creative and well reflects the feeling of exchange-of-interest negotiation in a representative democracy. the broader, more detached perspective does mean that it's not as immersive as the previous game, but there are still many moral dilemmas as you build society.
thanks to the heart-breaking weather special effects and the music that becomes more and more intense as the "tension" in the city increases, "freeze age 2" perfectly presents a cold atmosphere. since i just recently replayed frostpunk 1, i did miss the sight of citizens walking on the streets at first. however, citizens will occasionally comment on your actions, and the announcer will make some interesting comments about current events, so the city doesn't seem deserted.
the map itself will obviously be dull as everything is covered in white snow and ice, but geographical features such as mountains and cliffs give each area a unique look, and as cities are built, complex urban areas and auto-generated cables will give the city becoming more colorful, those cables also flash red when the tension in the city gets high.
the five-chapter story mode serves as a tutorial for the sandbox mode "utopia builders," but aside from a few brief cutscenes, there isn't much plot. except for some plots that will establish a direct connection with the previous game when you take over new london, the rest of the plot mainly uses short and touching stories to tell life in the frozen wasteland.
there's a lot to city planning, and you'll need to carefully study various urban areas and figure out how to place and expand them. each area occupies multiple grids, has a variety of auxiliary buildings that can be upgraded, and a hub building that occupies a separate grid and can provide adjacent bonuses. area types include residential areas, food production areas, resource/fuel extraction areas, industrial areas, logistics areas, etc.
this makes for an interesting planning puzzle, but it also has some arguable quirks: before you can do any building work, you have to clear a few squares via frost break, a mechanic that, while fitting in with the world, feels futile. the increased operation volume delays the player's planning speed. in addition, if you are not satisfied with a certain grid and want to move it, then you have to tear down the entire city area and start from scratch. this is really annoying, but at least the resources will be returned, so the cost is only your time. .
as you zoom up and look at the wider and barren map, the most eye-catching icons are those very game of thrones icons - they represent your colonies and outposts. you will discover locations for establishing colonies and outposts when you send out expeditions to explore. the expeditions may also bring back a large amount of resources and people that will be used to sustain the development of the colony.
the exploration process is more complex and detailed than in the first generation. you must use roads to connect the resources you discover to obtain a stable supply. then you need to build and upgrade more outposts, or even complete satellite colonies, to ensure new the normal functioning of london. while this is only a minor system, its rewards are crucial to increasing population, so i need to check back frequently to ensure a steady supply of resources.
the thing that bothers me most here is that when you are not in the main city, you cannot see the information of each faction at the bottom of the screen, so if you are busy getting supplies outside, and someone at home takes the opportunity to cause trouble, you may not be able to find out before things get serious. in addition, i would also like to be able to zoom in even further, because the map can become very large and take a lot of time to find the expedition that just completed the exploration.
you need to provide fuel for the central generator, heat the city, and ensure the supply of food and materials. these challenges are relatively common and straightforward in supply chain games, but in some important aspects, "ice age 2" sometimes it gets more complicated. the first is that large-scale "white curtains" often hit. during this period, all activities on the large map will come to a standstill and the supply chain will be interrupted, forcing you to rely on reserve supplies to survive for several months. this means that you cannot aim to break even, but must overproduce as much as possible, lest hundreds or thousands of residents freeze to death.
our review of frostpunk
despite the overwhelming sense of bleakness, frostpunk is still a charming experience. its gameplay is unique and diverse, blending the best of city building games and survival games, and adding some exploration elements. the plot is fascinating and has many directions, and the player's choices will determine how the story unfolds. all of this is presented through excellent art and graphic design, making the frozen wasteland far more charming than imagined. but the most original aspect of frostpunk is the moral dilemmas it poses, which force players to find a balance between their personal needs and the survival of their city without sacrificing their own humanity. —caley roark, april 24, 2018
rating: 9
speaking of freezing to death, i did encounter some ui-related bugs, such as sometimes having to click on dialogue options repeatedly before they would respond. sometimes buttons on the ui overlap, and when clicked, only the one below takes effect, not the more obvious one above. also, during auto-save, you won't be able to click anything for a few seconds, which is a bit annoying, but overall the problem is not serious. it should be mentioned that as the population increases, the operating performance will be affected to some extent, but this is a common problem in this type of game.
the faction and government systems are arguably the most attractive parts of icepunk 2. you have to move between different factions and find a balance between them. you'll need to win over the different factions by fulfilling the promises you made to them and governing the city the way they want to see it.
you won't fail because the colony dies (it's almost impossible to drop the population to 0), but you do have to worry about the citizens losing trust in you, or the tension rising to the point where the citizens will depose you. the shortage of any kind of resource may cause people to blame each other, which will eventually intensify and lead to the collapse of society.
in my first game, i made a simple rookie mistake: i thought it would be okay to abandon a faction completely as long as it satisfied the other factions, and at first, this strategy seemed to work.
you can research any technology at the push of a button (and pay a small fee), but in order to enact a law (often to make the technology you just researched take effect), you must first vote on a resolution in the parliament, which is composed of made up of 100 representatives from various factions.
"frost age 2" uses an interesting way to represent the voting process. members' seats will light up when voting, and the number of votes that have not been discussed in advance is as unpredictable as throwing dice. if you want to convince (buy) a faction into voting for it, you need to promise them something.
in most cases, they will want you to research a certain technology or pass a certain law that is in line with their values, but sometimes, they will also accept cold banknotes (ironically, the names of these banknotes are "warm coupons") . but if a proposal goes against a faction's values, they will flatly refuse to negotiate, so some votes remain in doubt.
what makes me happy is that if you use the chips at hand well, you can completely buy off the factions with the things you want to do in the first place. the ui will tell you which factions can support each version of each research project (most research projects have different versions to choose from, for example, it may reduce construction costs, increase production, but cause more pollution or increase tension. spend).
once you have this information, you can go to each faction and see if they will ask you to conduct research. if they ask, you can gain extra trust when doing research. you can also find factions that like to play devil's advocate and promise to let them choose the issues for the next vote to improve relations with them, and then when the actual vote comes, you can add fuel to the flames to help their opponents win, leaving them in vain. , this experience is always fun.
usually i am able to pass the laws i need overwhelmingly, and i am thorough when it comes to pursuing policies of "free necessities" (providing food to citizens) or "accept all outsiders" (regardless of whether they can work or not, the main purpose is to increase the population) ignore the extreme factions that are unhappy. the trouble is, until you unlock some tougher, more authoritarian policies, this approach makes you an easy target for protests that shut down areas, injure passers-by, destroy equipment, and, of course, let the tension soar.
that means you have to get back to the negotiating table, which can be quite difficult when riots bring everything to a standstill. as you progress through the game, you unlock more ways to deal with opponents, and you can even kill them all in one pot and leave them to freeze to death in an outdoor prison (i eventually beat the game by expelling the naysayers to their own colony) story mode), but many of these methods lead to increased tension and decreased trust. there are no easy answers to these questions, but that's part of the beauty of them.
my first playthrough of the story mode took me about 15 hours, including a restart because i realized how poor my initial decision-making was. after that, i spent another 20 hours in the sandbox mode "utopia builder" and experienced victory conditions such as "building multiple colonies with a population of 10,000" or "bringing the population of the main city to 50,000".
ice age 2 has a lot of replay potential. there are six main factions (and their radicalized branches) in the game that can be mixed and matched, there are 7 large maps to choose from, and different policy tendencies can unlock different radical ideas, allowing you to embark on different development routes. when playing on a difficulty higher than officer (the recommended difficulty for veteran players), you'll definitely need to spend more time understanding the preferences of each faction so as not to inadvertently anger them.
but i can’t help but feel that when we expanded from the relatively small layout of the previous game to the grander stage of multiple colonies, we lost something important-now we can only see it after specifically switching to a close-up perspective. figures of individual citizens.
so when i saw a pop-up message saying "93 children died in mine collapse," the impact on me was not strong because i didn't intuitively feel the meaning of this sentence, and this message it itself was quickly hidden. i couldn't even look up the names of the dead in the cemetery like in the previous game, which made it easy for me to treat these tragedies like a bunch of numbers on a statistical spreadsheet. the scale of "freeze age 2" is too large to take into account such details.
you may be asking, "no, wait a minute? how come there are 93 kids in the mine?" i'm glad you asked that question. one of the wisest decisions i made during my time as governor of new london was to replace compulsory education for children with apprenticeships, because that would increase the labor force -- i could have them digging in places that adults couldn't. coal. another option would be to use explosives to create tunnels that adults could move around normally, but that would reduce the amount of coal being mined. who knew something like this would happen? no one could have expected it!
frostpunk 2 constantly forces you to make these choices and face their consequences, and i often felt a little disgusted with myself when i ignored the harm i caused to people in favor of higher numbers. . so, while it doesn't torture players as hard as its predecessor, it does have a lot of thought-provoking moments, and these moments can add up in the end.
summarize
establishing multiple colonies, researching technology, and promulgating laws in frostpunk 2 is like spinning a wheel, a lot to juggle. almost everything you do is likely to piss off one of the city's factions, and a violent snowstorm is likely to freeze the economy completely. this sequel to the city-building game opts for a grander scheme, and loses some of the feeling of being inside it in the process. however, it chose bold innovation rather than conservative and stable iterative upgrades, which means that even if you start playing the new game immediately after playing the first generation, you will not feel that you have played most of the content.
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